School bus woes continue

6-year-old girl let off seven blocks from home

Strangers helped a crying 6-year-old get home Friday after a Broward County school bus driver let her off at the wrong stop, several blocks from her Lauderhill house.

Her waiting father traded phone calls with school district employees for an hour before police officers cops brought the girl home. Senior school officials visited the parents of Ma'Kayvia Mackey, a special needs student, and assured them they would find out what went wrong.

This latest mishap comes amid chaos in Broward County Schools after thousands of complaints about transportation problems. In the first weeks of school, the district has taken more than 14,000 calls reporting no-show or overcrowded buses and errant dropoffs like Ma'Kayvia's.

"She was scared. She was crying," said Marilynn Mackey, 36, Ma'Kayvia's mother who lives in the 5200 block of Northwest 11th Street. "A lady saw her crying. The lady took her in the house and gave her something to eat and gave her something to drink."

She had been about seven blocks north of where she was supposed to be dropped off. Michael Mackey, her father, who normally waits there for her, knew something was wrong when she didn't show up at 3:30 p.m. as usual.

When he called the School District, workers told him she was placed on an alternate bus because hers was too full. Then they told him they were checking with the transportation chief. Then they told him her sister picked her up.

"She don't have a sister," Michael Mackey said. "Imagine how I feel at this point."

Ma'Kayvia, an "exceptional education" student with learning disabilities, was spotted by residents as she wandered around a part of the neighborhood she did not recognize. Michael Mackey said he wants to know why the driver let her off the bus.

School officials could not be reached on Saturday, but when the superintendent and two other officials went to the Mackeys' home on Friday, they vowed to take action.

"They came to let us know that they're going to get us some answers, and they're going to get to the bottom of it," Marilynn Mackey said.

The issue of transportation has boiled into a political brawl, fanned by comments from Superintendent Robert Runcie and Transportation Services Director Chester Tindall, who said the union was conspiring to disrupt bus services.

School Board member Nora Rupert, a critic of the administration, said she was "saddened" by the latest mistake but added that school employees have been working hard on their own time to solve the problems, sometimes waiting after school with students.

"First of all, I'm horrified, as a parent, because I have three kids," Rupert said. "If they're missing for five minutes, it's a catastrophe because I think the worst."